Why They Lost Their Best Customer
by Manchester
Summary: Xander Harris solves an enduring mystery of the ages- Oh, all right, maybe just forty years or so. Happy now?
1. Chapter 1

In the middle of the desert, Xander Harris stood in the shade of the cliff overhand, his fists on his hips, as he thoughtfully eyed his unexpected discovery, and during all this, the man tried to decide if he should feel annoyed or intrigued about the whole thing, considering that he was supposed to be on vacation.

* * *

Ever since his sojourn in Africa several years ago looking for new Slayers after the collapse of Sunnydale, the remaining Scooby Gang women had continuously teased their friend over his preference to take his vacations from New Council business in the most remote, isolated places he could find. One particular female, who had a tendency to break out in hives whenever she found herself more than twenty miles from a mall, had just a few days ago aggressively demanded of the man, "What's that all about, Xan? Don't you want to have fun, see the sights, do something besides head to places where nobody but you is around in the whole county?"

Giving Buffy a fond look, Xander had then developed a somewhat peculiar half-grin on his face, as if he'd just remembered a very private joke, to then casually say to the impatiently waiting Slayer, "I like the quiet."

Throwing up her hands in exasperation as she slouched back in her seat in the conference room of the Scottish castle of the International Watchers' Council, Buffy glowered at a giggling Dawn and an equally-amused Willow next to her at the table, as the smiling witch looked up from the map Xander had given to the red-haired woman. Before the grumpy Slayer could say anything further, it was Willow who announced, "Well, you'll have lots of that there, Xan. Apart from where you're gonna be picked up and taken to your campground, there's nobody else there in that particular stretch of the desert. No people, and most important, absolutely no demons."

Leaning over to look again at the map of Xander's latest vacation spot that Willow had just magically scanned for possible threats to her yellow-crayon friend, Dawn disbelievingly shook her head, and then she snorted, "_Most_ guys who had the money, time, and urge would go anywhere else in the world, like Hawaii, the French Riviera, or my bedroom, but no, Xander Harris instead decides to spend a few weeks alone in the American Southwest desert!"

"_DAWN_!" screeched Buffy and Willow in unison at what the younger Summers sister smirking at them both had slipped into her recent statement. Dawn then sent a very sultry look across the conference table at a red-faced Xander there, as she continued her relentless campaign since her eighteenth birthday to turn that man into the husband of Mrs. Dawn Harris.

"Okay, okay, settle down, everyone, or I won't bring back presents for you all!" hastily warned a very discomfited Xander, feeling a bit more sure of himself once he saw how this threat had subdued the trio of women in his life.

The man's short-lived sense of confidence abruptly vanished, as he now found himself the direct target of three pairs of supreme puppy-dog eyes from a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead, as the oldest of the females then cooed to him, "They're gonna be wonderful prezzies, right, Xan? Better than last year, we betcha."


	2. Chapter 2

A week later, as he remembered how his conference with his friends had ended, Xander's tanned face split into a wide grin under his broad-brimmed hat as the one-eyed man trudged along the desert canyon. He really was going to have to come up with something good for his girls when he went back to work. Still, he had a lot of time to think about it, now that he'd settled down in his campsite and could finally relax.

It had been more than a little surprising for Xander during his first few months in Africa on how much simply being alone in the wilderness had reduced his stress levels and allowed him to come to terms with his memories of everything that had happened in Sunnydale. The man had been somewhat disquieted at how tightly wound up he'd been back then, but solitude and nature had worked their own magic, and this still continued during his subsequent vacations. Stopping during his hike, Xander happily took a deep breath of desert air free of pollution, listened to the sounds of silence, and he casually glanced around the stark beauty of the rough country around him, with absolutely no trace of humanity-

Fifty feet away, at the other side of the canyon, there was a big steel door tucked away under a cliff overhang.

A few seconds of a scrambling trot that jounced his combination backpack/camelpak against his shoulders got Xander in front of that unbelievable object, to then stand there staring in total astonishment as a rhetorical question burst from his mouth: "What the _hell_ is this?"

Frowning, the Sunnydale survivor turned around in a slow circle to more closely examine the canyon he'd decided on an idle whim an hour ago to explore. It looked exactly like the rest of all the barren land he'd walked over the last few miles, as if he was the very first human to ever come this way. No trail, no trash (not even the usual empty beer cans), no road, no set of railroad tracks, or anything else that could explain how something that would have ordinarily been unremarked in front of an industrial factory doorway had instead found its way here, in the middle of the uninhabited desert, to be an entry or exit into the side of a sheer cliff.

Once more facing that incredible door while absently rubbing his eyepatch, Xander gave this featureless steel panel a more thorough inspection, which showed to him that the door set upright into the stone face of the cliff was ten feet by six feet in size and it had a simple metal handle, plus there were also outside hinges which might mean it swung outwards. There were also some rather odd things the man noticed. For instance, the entire surface of the door was rusting, and there was a knee-high thorny bush growing undisturbed from the ground at the very bottom of this panel, suggesting that nobody had opened it for a while. Considering how little rainfall there was in this place to cause steel to corrode or to allow water-starved plants to slowly grow in a desert, that amount of time might be measured in decades.

However, what was most interesting to Xander at this particular moment was the fact that there wasn't a keyhole on the door, or even any indication of a lock whatsoever. Mulling that over, the man came to the only conclusion that explained things: this was a mine entrance, or more likely, an emergency exit, since there was no road or any other avenue of transportation to bring equipment here or to remove ores and waste material. Nodding to himself in pleased satisfaction, Xander began to turn away, about to return to his hike now that he'd solved this minor mystery.

Stopping short, the Scooby Gang member then eyed the door again, and he cautiously stepped forward nearer the bush against the door, ready to instantly leap backwards at the first angry buzzing of a disturbed rattlesnake that might be concealed in the undergrowth. This didn't occur, so Xander now got close enough to the door for his extended right hand to grab hold on the door handle, and he at once pulled back on this with a good yank.

With only a faint screech from the hinges, the door smoothly swung open, at least until it became hung up on the bush. Twisting around to lean into the gap between the door and the vertical side piece of the door frame, Xander continued to shove the panel open, managing to tear through and uproot the undergrowth, until the door was almost fully ajar. Panting slightly from his recent exertions, Xander then turned back towards the gaping doorway, where he looked into absolute darkness.

Shrugging his backpack off his shoulders onto the ground, Xander knelt down and rummaged through the small bag that mostly held his half-filled camelpak cheerfully sloshing away as he poked around inside the hiking bag, pushing aside some granola bars, until he found the emergency kit there for survival situations. From this kit, he now pulled out a little cylindrical tube that had a key at one end and an encased glass bulb on the other end. Turning the key several times caused the bulb to flare into a dim light that was easily distinguishable in the shadows under the cliff overhang. A few more twists on the spring-powered flashlight brought this small tool into full brightness.

Standing up by his backpack, Xander pointed his light into the doorway. The blackness inside swallowed up the illumination after it penetrated only a few feet into there, until the man lowered his hand to put the beam of light upon the inner smooth stone floor behind the doorsill, which in a couple of yards further on dipped into a step carved into the rock, and then another, and another, and another…


	3. Chapter 3

A few seconds later, with the backpack once more riding on his shoulders, and his flashlight shining downwards onto the numerous steps descending into the darkness, the one-eyed man carefully went down the flight of stone stairs, knowing exactly how stupid and dangerous this was. Hey, stupid and dangerous and Xander Harris were old friends. Anyway, he had something tightly gripped in his left hand that nobody else in this exact situation was likely to possess. Not unless they knew a red-haired witch with enough mojo to use an erupting volcano as a blow-dryer after her morning shower.

Giving a tentative squeeze on the little charm firmly held in his left fist, Xander was confident that if it became absolutely necessary, he could quickly clench his fingers hard enough to crush the magical trinket that would promptly start the teleportation spell Willow had laid upon her gifts passed out to the Scooby Gang several Christmases ago. After she'd done this, the Wiccan had solemnly warned all there not to use her presents except in a real emergency, where their lives were in immediate danger. When pressed by the others on why not, Willow had reluctantly revealed the two main reasons why the charms were best left unused until they were truly needed: first, they were expensive in both magical raw materials and also in her personal power, taking at least a week to craft a single teleportation charm. Second, there was a rather, um, idiosyncratic consequence of their operation while bringing the user to safety.

The man cautiously walking down the flight of stone stairs really hoped he wouldn't have to employ this last-ditch means of escape. Given his usual kind of luck, Willow would be having the whole Devon coven of her sister witches over for tea at her workplace with its massive ceremonial pentagram etched in pure silver bands on the floor, at the exact moment when a stark-naked Xander Harris appeared out of thin air in the middle of this mystical symbol.

Thankfully, there seemed to be no current likelihood of this. Several moments ago while standing at the top of the stairs after passing through the doorway, he'd listened intently for a full minute, only to hear nothing at all. In fact, it was as quiet as a tomb. Actually, Xander was perfectly fine with the silence of someone's final resting place; you only started having problems in there when you heard coming from the murky gloom such sounds as evil giggles, the advancing scrape of claws or talons against the stone floor, and the constant chanting of "Cthulhu fhtagn." Besides, as he'd promised himself before starting his descent, just a few more steps, and if they kept on going down without revealing anything interesting, then he'd turn back.

Something interesting did unexpectedly reveal itself in the beam of illumination from his flashlight. Stopping short, Xander then absently muttered under his breath, "Well, Wils, there might not have been any live demons here when you looked for them on the map, but they sure as hell were around this place sometime in the past."

Standing a few steps above the stone floor that had suddenly materialized out of the darkness, Xander kept his light steadily pointed at the motionless corpse of the demon lying prone on the floor just a foot beyond the last stair of the landing. It was clearly a deceased demon rather than some unknown dead human, since people usually wore clothes and they didn't have fur all over their bodies. *Uh, dude, there _was _Oz during his bad hair days,* Xander mentally corrected himself, as that thought caused him to worriedly peer more closely at the corpse, though he didn't see all that much that differed from his initial impression.

The demon was crumpled up in its face-down position, whether from originally falling in that posture, or from when its limbs had contracted due to a rather unique occurrence in Xander's extensive experiences with demons that had kicked the bucket, usually after being chopped into pieces by a blonde Slayer. Instead of normally turning into a puddle of goo on the floor after dying, this specific demon had become mummified in the cool, dry environment of the chamber the man had recently descended into. As the dead body's moisture had been sucked out during its decomposition, accompanied by the shrinking of the skin, this had caused the demon's limbs to be pulled towards the torso.

Still, most of the tatty fur remained upon this being's upper body, enough for Xander to tell the color of this covering was a brownish-gray pelt, just like some kind of animal. Though, the New Council member was positive this demon wasn't just an ordinary desert beast, particularly since it was clearly some sort of a biped, with big, shaggy, human-style feet, lanky arms and legs, and a skinny torso ending in a ragged tail. Not to mention the head with a cranium large enough for some serious intellect. Moving his flashlight up to that part of the demon's body, Xander noticed something new. Thankfully, the decayed face was hidden from him, but the demon's head was twisted to the side on a crooked neck that seemed to be in a clearly unnatural position.

Xander now shifted his flashlight from the demon's body, to then thoughtfully shine it down at his own feet resting on the stairway several steps above the floor. The man mused aloud to himself, "So, mister demon, you were coming down here, maybe in a hurry, tripped or lost your balance, went ass-over-teakettle, and hit the floor hard enough to put out your lights permanently." Xander now cynically shook his head, as he continued, "Hey, pal, looks like you became part of the statistics that say the stairs are the most dangerous place in the house." The California native became a bit more pensive, with him next commenting, "In any case, you weren't some kind of were. A proper werewolf wouldn't have even noticed such a little thing like a broken neck."

Idly flipping up his flashlight, Xander now held it straight out above the floor, to then sweep his light horizontally from side to side. During all that, he got the impression of objects fairly close to himself, along with the sense that he was in an immense room or cave. So, it was time to really explore. Now that he'd found an actual demon, it was back to his usual job in investigating this place and calling in the rest of the New Council, if necessary.

"This better not come out of my vacation hours," snarked Xander Harris.


	4. Chapter 4

As Xander went down the last step above the stone floor, and after checking with his flashlight to make sure there was enough room, he jumped over and past the dead demon, landing on the left side of the body, to then stand there for a moment warily regarding the corpse. After all, he'd often seen the generic horror movie with the predictable scene where the monster plays dead until it can catch off guard any of the following: the cheerleader, the sorority pledge, or the camp counselor, all of them currently dressed in their skimpiest underwear. Continuing to closely examine the lifeless fiend, Xander inwardly groused to himself that in all his life since he'd fallen off his skateboard in front of a true babe and then gotten involved with the supernatural world, that specific event regarding unclad hotties had somehow never occurred whenever he was around. Oh, no, it was always the other thing, usually involving some unholy creature with sharp fangs promptly going for his throat, and his typical reaction to that as well from high school on.

"Been there, done that, soaked the t-shirt in holy water and spun it into a lash, along with snapping it right into a vamp's face. Got some good distance, too," the man with an eyepatch snorted, while horizontally waving the flashlight at waist level. At the edge of the light on his left, something loomed up towards the cave's ceiling.

Taking a few cautious steps nearer, Xander blinked at what was revealed there in the circle of illumination. It was a wall of large wooden crates, with all of these neatly stacked on top of each other to about twenty feet high, and running from the back wall of the cave to away from the man standing there, disappearing into the darkness further on in the cavern. Wandering closer to the strange wall, Xander noticed there was a company name stamped on all the sides of the crates, just barely distinguishable under the dust and cobwebs that coated the wooden boxes. The name wasn't familiar to him, which didn't really mean anything - for all he knew, that company had gone out of business years or even decades ago, judging from how much grime had accumulated on the unopened boxes. Of far more interest to the man was the fact that he couldn't think of any way to easily get into one of the crates to see whatever it might contain.

Sweeping his flashlight to the right, Xander's mood perked up at finding a real prize. There, in the middle of the room, was a single crate with its lid already removed and leaning against the side of the container, which kept the man from seeing into the crate. Striding over, Xander stopped in front of the opened box, the top of which was also completely covered with dusty cobwebs. Gingerly poking his flashlight into the mat of spider silk, which caused it to brightly glow, a flick of Xander's wrist ripped around the organic shroud to reveal-

"_Shit!_" barked the flustered one-eyed man, as he hurriedly backed away a few steps away from the crate, to then apprehensively stand there as he again aimed his flashlight at what he _really_ hoped was something that could be easily explained away by anything else despite having a pointed nose cone mounted on the front of a thick steel cylinder, and also possessing four metal triangular fins attached at regular intervals around the end of the cylinder. "Please tell me that's not a rocket!" groaned Xander to himself.

A sudden horrified thought made Xander whirl around, to again aim his flashlight at the body of the unfortunate demon lying at the foot of the stairs, and in the next moment, the light then shifted to shine against the wall of crates. Still holding his beam of illumination there, Xander gloomily muttered aloud, "A demon, and what looks like _lots_ of boxes of rockets! You idiot, what are the odds you had to be the one to stumble onto an old Initiative base! Even if it's not really that, this isn't exactly good news anyway!"

His face grim, Xander now swept his flashlight around, to then see on the right side of the cavern some more unidentifiable objects. When he headed over there, the man found a large machine shop, with more than enough tools and equipment capable of building virtually anything. The only thing that alleviated the slightest Xander's growing concern was that every piece of machinery was also coated with decades of cobwebs, definitely a sign that nobody had laid a finger on any of this in all that time.

Working his way along the various apparatus towards the far wall of the cavern, a further sweep of Xander's flashlight revealed a large table out in the middle of the room. Walking over, the man found there a rolling chair and a floor lamp in front of this piece of furniture that was quickly recognized as a draftsman's tilted table, with what looked like a large blueprint still pinned onto the surface of the table. Brushing away more dust and cobwebs that coated the sheet of drawing paper, an act that made him sneeze several times, Xander then shone his light onto the blueprint. It was barely legible, with the ink on the paper almost completely faded away, making it necessary for him to lean forward until his nose almost touched the tabletop and squinting intensely at what had been sketched on the plans.

*Lessee….some kinda launch pad….why would anyone make it so complicated?….the rocket's supposed to take off and travel along the dotted line….and then land right onto that- What _is_ that squiggle?*

As a baffled Xander straightened up to then absently scratch the right side of his head with the flashlight, he accidentally shone it into his remaining eye, forcing him to stand there blinking away the afterimages, as he mulled over this new discovery and how it just brought up more questions. *Seem like some kinda inventor/mad scientist thing going on here, instead of a military base or bunker. But what's the point? Not to mention the why and how and who and- Oh, the hell with it. I'll just leave it to Giles and Wils and the rest of the big brains back at the castle to figure it all out when they poke around here.*

Still seeing dots in his vision, Xander stood patiently before the table to wait until his vision was finally unimpaired before taking the steep stairs back up to the outside world. During this, he idly panned his flashlight along the width of the table to see if there was anything else there to be discovered, only to notice something abruptly sparkle in the upper rim of the beam of light just over the edge of the table. Frowning, Xander walked around the table to find out what had caused that odd result. After a few steps forward, the far wall of the cavern loomed up before him, with the man momentarily disregarding this to instead concentrate on something _much_ more interesting.

Stopping a few feet in front of the sheer wall, Xander stared down at where his flashlight was pointing, directly at a small, knee-high pile of rocks and other stony rubble in various sizes that had clearly been earlier gouged out of the foot of the wall by the cobweb-draped pickaxe leaning against the pile. Suddenly feeling a little faint, Xander shut his right eye for a moment, and then he quickly opened it to once more stare at the rocky heap, which hadn't changed the slightest. Finally, a numb Xander tucked away Willow's teleportation charm into his jeans pocket, and with his now-free left hand, he reached out to pick up the baseball-sized rock right at the top of the pile.

Straining to lift the unexpectedly heavy rock to chest level, Xander pointed his flashlight at the stone chunk at a range of a few inches, which produced a vivid yellow radiance intermingled with flashes of brilliance from crystals intermingled with the thick veins of mineral deposits running throughout the rock. His right hand then slowly moved the flashlight away from the rock to again point the now-shaking light at the small pile of other stones, which also glowed the soft yellow of a cloudy sun. Lastly, the circle of illumination then moved up to the face of the far wall, which seemed to be one solid slab of pure gold!

After a while, a faint voice echoed throughout the cavern, "Well, even split three ways, there's no way Buffy, Wils, and Dawn can possibly complain about their present from me this year. No sirree, the only thing that might cause a teensy little problem is when I go on vacation next year, how am I gonna come up with something that'll top giving them a whole gold mine?"

It was at that point that a dazed Xander Harris let slip from his fingers the twenty-pound gold nugget that unerringly landed onto his big toe, resulting in howls of pain resounding throughout the cavern, bringing back familiar sounds to this chamber that were common forty years ago and earlier, that had ended due to the fatal mishap happening to Wile E. Coyote, when that persistent pursuer of the Road Runner had his stairway accident along his hurried way to complete that super genius' task of mining enough gold to pay for the latest shipment from the Acme Company.

* * *

Author's Note: Well, I always wondered how that coyote actually paid for all his gadgets from the Acme Company… (It never made all that much sense to me about someone else's idea a few years ago that this cartoon character was a product tester for the factory.) Anyway, this is the Buffyverse, so despite Wile E.'s various appearances in movies and other media in this reality during the last forty years, that exact dimension had seen the last of him after the release of the 1964 cartoon 'War and Pieces', which I picked since it was the final movie featurette entirely done by Chuck Jones and the rest of the Termite Terrace gang just before the Warner Brothers corporation closed down their animation studio, and a classic era ended. Yeah, considering that character previously survived having entire mountains falling onto him, it was worth a giggle to kill him off with just a simple domestic accident. Ah, the irony.

Oh, and the Road Runner? My best guess is that after hanging out in the desert for a few weeks waiting for his incompetent foe to show up again and provide that speedy bird with some more amusement, a bored _Accelerati incredibilus _shrugged its non-existent shoulders, called out for one last time "Meep! Meep!" and then zoomed off into the sunset.


End file.
